Television Reviews : ‘Radio Priest’ Shows Televangelists Have No New Tricks

As many people who were around 50 years ago can tell you, manipulation of the media by religious demagogues is not exclusive to the television era. It’s simply been born again--so to speak--from the radio age, as tonight’s easy history lesson “The Radio Priest” (9 p.m., Channels 28 and 15) shows with divine clarity.

This latest chapter of the PBS series “The American Experience” focuses on Father Charles Coughlin, who differed from today’s Jerry Falwells and Pat Robertsons in three notable ways:

--He used radio rather than TV.

--He was a Roman Catholic priest (from a Detroit suburb) rather than a protestant fundamentalist.

--As a speaker he stomped around in a vague and contradictory middle ground (berating “Bolsheviks” in one breath while slamming “Wall Street capitalists” in the next) before eventually revealing more overt fascist tendencies.

Otherwise, he fit the modern mold pretty well--attracting an audience by tapping into its misfortunes and fears, getting deeply involved in politics, and taking in millions of dollars. His audience was estimated at 30 million during the late 1930s.

“Radio Priest” leaves comparisons with Coughlin’s modern counterparts to the mind of the viewer. Instead, it puts us in the man’s time, adeptly using newsreels, promotional films and interviews to give a sense of the Depression and how Coughlin and others took advantage of many Americans’ distress.

The documentary does leave at least one important question little touched upon: Why did the Catholic hierarchy allow Coughlin to attain such individual power?

While pointing out that Coughlin’s archbishop approved of his actions, “Radio Priest,” made by veteran documentarist Irv Drasnin, leaves us to speculate about the position of other church officials, including the Pope, before they finally decided to lower the boom on Coughlin in 1942.

Not that Coughlin’s brand of religion-through-hate has died; it’s simply evolved into a larger monster with an even longer list of victims.